DIY Essential Oil Blend To Relieve Stress & Anxiety
Depending on the situation, it usually starts at the center of my back. Muscles tighten, my shoulders hunch up towards my ears… my jaw begins to clench and pop. Teeth grinding, stomach churning, palms sweating. Stress and anxiety present themselves differently in each and every one of us, but I’m willing to bet you’ve experienced these symptoms — or something like them — at some point yourself. We’re a society of chronic stress, an awful fact, and what makes it even worse is that many of us don’t even realize that we’re affected by it. We go about our lives, accepting that twisted jaw and knotted stomach as an inevitability, something to live with, but slowly, that secret — or not-so-secret — stress might just be killing us.
Your body is trained to react to stress in many of the same ways it reacts to a perceived threat. Theoretically, a mountain of bills (or hey, our taxes) may seem far less scary than running from a wild animal, but our bodies don’t see the difference. While we may not be constantly under attack by outside forces, dealing with your day to day life can be enough to make your body feel as though it’s fighting a battle. While vastly different, each stressful situation, whether life-threatening or simply inconvenient, triggers a fight or flight response, releasing adrenaline and cortisol into the bloodstream. Adrenaline increases blood pressure and boosts your energy supplies, while cortisol releases a surge of glucose into the bloodstream, curbing certain functions that wouldn’t be productive in a dangerous situation and even altering your immune system. Yes, all that can happen from just looking at a packed calendar and feeling stressed out, or thinking about an upcoming test. If you’re chronically stressed, this means your body is reacting this way all the time, which can translate to some serious health risks, including:
Scary stuff indeed. Which is why we need to work towards eliminating — or at least decreasing — our stress, whether chronic or not. Today is National Stress Awareness Day, so what better time to take a step back, and really, truly assess how you feel? What is causing you anxiety? What’s stressing you out? How can you work towards eliminating those situations in your life, or at least work towards lessening their effects.
While chronic stress and anxiety should be assessed by a professional, something that always helps me decompress and de-stress is scent. Scent is an extremely powerful thing. It can conjure memories both good and bad, excite us, soothe us, even encourage us to sleep. Today I’m sharing an essential oil blend that I concocted to ease a troubled mind and put nerves to rest.
Read on for my stress-relieving, anxiety-soothing recipe.
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